Designing Commemoration – Call for Papers

Designing Commemoration: Performance, Process and Participation

In 2015, we are nearing the mid-point of what has been termed Ireland’s ‘Decade of Centenaries’. This period has already seen the development of several large-scale commemorative projects, such as that around the centenary of 1913 and of the beginning of the Great War, as well as many conferences, lectures and events contextualizing and exploring these events and their broader symbolic meaning.

In the current conversation around the Decade of Centenaries, the emphasis has been on the historical events themselves and their larger political impact and position. This conference seeks to move beyond this narrative, focusing on the participatory, performative, visual, material and social aspects of commemoration.

We invite proposals for papers for ‘Designing Commemoration: performance, process and participation’ which explore and reflect on the experience of designing and creating commemorative events, works of art or places, as well as the experience of participation in commemoration in visual and material culture. Moving beyond the chronological limits of the Decade of Centenaries, papers exploring a wide range of commemorative events or experiences, contemporary and historical, national and international, are invited.

We welcome proposals from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including historians, activists, art historians, geographers, architects, designers, artists, musicians, those involved in commissioning commemoration, dancers, festive artists, community arts practitioners and street theatre practitioners.

Topics for consideration include, but are not limited to:

  • Commissioning commemorative works of art or events,
  • Creating and developing artworks responding to commemoration,
  • Commemorative events in public spaces,
  • The visual and material cultures of commemoration,
  • Commemorative performances, including reenactment,
  • Performance and crowd behaviour,
  • Permanent and ephemeral traces of commemoration,
  • Creative process and commemorative commissions,
  • Individual and public acts of commemoration,
  • Commemoration and popular culture,
  • Absent/unbuilt commemorations.

This conference will take place on 8th and 9th October 2015 at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick and the Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin. Keynote speakers will be soon confirmed. Abstracts of 300 words for twenty minute papers should be submitted to designingcommemoration@gmail.com, by 17:00 on the 30 March 2015.

More information here.